147 - Book | The Self-Driven Child
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Welcome to the Nancy Ray Book Club, where once a month I tell you about a book I'm reading and loving and I share my top three takeaways from that book. To learn more about the books I'm reading this year head to nancyray.com/bookclub. And to get even more out of these episodes, I encourage you pick up these books, join me and read them alongside me.
Now, today I'm going to be talking about The Self-Driven Child, which is a book that's going to stay with me throughout the rest of my parenting journey. One that I am highly encouraging Will to read alongside me and one that I'm committing to picking up and reading again when my kids get a little older. It's that good. Think about it—who doesn't want a self-driven child who grows up to be a self-driven adult.
Now the tagline of the book is "The science and sense of giving your kids more control over their lives." If you have kiddos of any age, I think this episode is going to be really helpful and will hopefully give you some things to think about and act on that will help you raise motivated, driven children.
For the full episode, hit play above or read through it below.
You know, when I think about having a healthy soul and a fulfilling life, I don't picture someone living in their parents' basement at 30 or 40 years old. That's the opposite. And I think about wanting to raise children who are self-driven, who can grow up to be adults who have motivation and drive and, and they know what they want. That is so linked to having a healthy soul and a fulfilling life to live out God's purpose and God's calling for you.
So a lot of times, right before I record an episode, I'll think, how does this have to do with having a healthy soul and a fulfilling life? And I think this book speaks directly to how to raise children who have that inner drive that will lead to a healthy soul and truly a fulfilling life. Authors, William Stixrud, who goes by Bill in the book and Ned Johnson did a brilliant job with this book. I loved it.
Now, a quick background on these two authors (I think this is really fascinating and helpful to how they came together and wrote this book): Bill is a clinical neuropsychologist who helps kids cope with anxiety. He has a very calm presence and he focuses a lot of his work on meditation and the benefits of that, and Ned founded a tutoring company and he's highly energetic and helps kids through the art and science of performance. And they came together, even though they have very different backgrounds, but they both work with kids. They said their work really fit like puzzle pieces together because they talk about managing anxiety and how to get children or kids as they grow up to really have a self drive inside of them.
Now, things I love about this book: it focuses on the brain. Y'all know I'm all about brain science right now. You know that it's something I'm fascinated with and learning about it from a kid's perspective is fascinating. This book has taught me to view my kids differently and myself differently. To view my kids like they're independent people whom I love and respect, and they have different gifts and different desires. And my role is not to control them and tell them how to live life, but to be a consultant and let them figure it out on their own. To have that autonomy. One line in the book says, "Autonomy, autonomy, autonomy.” It's all about their autonomy.
The action items at the end of each chapter is another thing I absolutely love at the end of each chapter. There's a section called "What can you do tonight?" It's practical, something you can do that day, and it focuses on empowering your child and releasing your own sense of control over your child, which isn't always easy, but it's really helpful. I could have written 10 or 15 takeaways from this book, truly. It had so many good things in it, but I only have time for three today.
So if you're a parent, just do yourself a favor, grab this book, read the whole thing. But for now, I'm going to share with you my top three takeaways of The Self-Driven Child.
Number one, the key to a self-driven child is giving them as much control and autonomy as possible in their lives.
So at the time of this recording, my kids are ages 6, 4, 3, and six months old. My mindset about parenting thus far has largely been “you were tiny, you were little, you can't think about things logically, and you need a lot of help from mama and daddy. We need to help you in all the ways. I'm a grown-up. I know all the things about life. You are little, you don't. So let me help you in every single area of your life.”
While reading this book, I've learned that while that is like very good motives and my heart is in the right place, what's really happening is that I tend to control a lot of what they do. I tend to assert myself and my opinions and my control over what could be their decisions.
I genuinely want to help them and I want to teach them and I want to show them how to live life. But what I haven't realized is that often, that's translated into taking an opportunity away from them, and I end up controlling them instead of empowering them to learn to make their own decisions and control their own life. The Self-Driven Child is showing me that as early as possible I need to be giving them a sense of control over their own life. So how do I do this?
One of the best things I think that the book says is to change my view of myself into a consultant, rather than this highly involved parent that tells them what to do, aka controls them all the time. I need to view myself as a consultant. That I am there, I'm calm, I'm loving, I'm supportive, but I let them make a lot of decisions and I give them every opportunity that I can (that's age appropriate within healthy boundaries and for their safety) to make their own choices and even fail and learn from those choices. I need to show empathy when they do fail, but be a safe landing place of support that they can come to and they can confide in.
And that is going to teach them and give them this sense of empowerment that they have control over their lives. And like I said, my kids are small. I feel like this book, which is why I want to read it again, is really going to be helpful. Even when they get just a little bit older, like ages 8, 10, 12, and into their teen years.
But right now I can still empower them to make their own choices. And so these are a few ways that I am trying to just release my control over my kids right now. I'm letting them dress themselves. I am not picking out their outfits for them. It makes for hilarious clothing days, but I just let them dress themselves. The only two exceptions I say are, Mommy gets to choose what you wear during picture day and Mommy helps you choose what to wear for church, because it's a little bit dressier. But I still let them choose their outfit they just can't wear like, you know, exercise clothes or a bathing suit or whatever. Not that they wear bathing suits all the time, but you get what I'm saying. They could, they very well could. So I help guide them in those decisions.
Another example, I'm letting them put their own salt and pepper on their food. Sometimes they totally ruin their food, so we guide them and we help them. But I'm trying to let them have that little sense of control. Sometimes I'll even say, "Hey, do you want to make your own plate tonight?" And I let them have that sense of control over putting the food on their plate. I'll let them have control over planning our Saturdays. I'll say, "Hey guys, come on over here. This is what we all have to do today. Let's choose. Let's make the plan for the day together and we'll write it out in order."
One example that I love in the book is when he talks about sports and extracurricular activities and playing instruments and things like that, and really giving them the sense of control and choice in those things. This has been a big mindset shift for me, okay, because I have just kind of pre-planned for my children to play soccer and play piano. Like all of them I'm like, that sounds good, you know? Will loves soccer. I love piano. Let's just make sure that all our kids have those experiences in their lives, and this book kind of shattered that for me in the very best way, because he talked about—you know what? Your kid might not like group sports and that's okay. It's up to us to let them try a lot of different things, to expose them to a lot of different experiences and, then again, be the consultant and help them choose what's best for them. What are they interested in? And let that blossom.
I'll never forget when I was growing up, my mom made all of us take piano and honestly, God bless her for that. I loved it. And I love piano and I still play a little bit today and I really do love it. I mean, I spent years playing on a worship team and I just love piano so much, but I will say thinking back to my childhood, we fought over practicing piano the most out of everything. I mean, she would tell me it's time to practice piano, and I just wouldn't want to do it. It's because she was, I think trying to obviously help me develop the skill in my life, but I, as a kid, remember interpreting it as, “Oh my gosh, Mom, stop trying to control me.”
So the book speaks to this, listen, if you want your kid to play a piano or some musical instrument, that's great. But let it be all up to them. Tell them if they don't practice and they don't want to, they don't have to. We're just going to pull them out a piano, but it's up to them to practice and stay on top of it. And you can give guidelines, like, “You know what, we're a musical family. If you don't choose to play piano, that's okay, but you need to choose another instrument and let me know what that is.”
Or with sports: If you don't choose to play soccer—which by the way, we put Milly in this little soccer team and it was a total disaster. She takes after me, she is not a group sports kind of girl. If you don't want to play soccer—that's fine. Tell me, you know, we're an active family so tell me what's something else that you can be active in and that you can participate in that sounds interesting to you. And so we've talked about signing her up for dance lessons. She's really excited about either that or gymnastics and it's a much better fit for her. So letting them have control over their lives in as many ways as we possibly can.
At the end of one chapter, when it says, "What can you do tonight?" One of the suggestions he said was to make a list of the things your child has control over, and then ask yourself, “is there anything you can add to that list?” One of the top secrets of having a self-driven child is to give them as much control and autonomy as possible in their lives.
My second takeaway is we need to understand the way the brain works.
Motivation is something that comes from within. It's not something that you can teach, but the truth is, is that it comes from the brain. It comes from having a healthy brain. And so if you know how the brain works, you can help your child to develop healthy habits that lead to motivation.
So here's a quick explanation of how the brain works. Y'all know, I love this stuff. This is so good. Here's what I really like about their explanation, they have nicknames for parts of the brain that really help you understand the four main components of how the brain works. Okay. So number one is the Pilot. Number two is the Lion Fighter. Number three is the Cheerleader. And number four is the Buddha—as a Christian, I don't love the name of the Buddha for in the last one. Think of it more as like "The Peaceful," we got to think of another name than the Buddha, but it's okay. We're just going to go with their names for now because it's their book.
So let's talk about the Pilot, the executive control system, that is your prefrontal cortex. This is the reasoning part of your brain. It's the one that processes a lot of complex thoughts. It makes decisions, it's not fully developed. The prefrontal cortex is not fully developed I think until age 25, which is why kids and teenagers, sometimes they make really dumb decisions. But one thing the book says, which I really appreciate is that they still have a prefrontal cortex. They're still able to make decisions. It's not that they can't make any decisions. And so it's up to us as the parent to allow them to make as many decisions as possible on their own. So that's the Pilot.
The Lion Fighter is the stress response system of the brain. It's made up of the amygdala, the hypothalamus—hoping I'm saying all these right—hypothalamus, hippocampus, and your pituitary and adrenal glands. Well, that's a mouthful. All of those things come together to make up the Lion Fighter. This is our fight or flight. This is, you know, when we're under high amounts of stress, we cannot think clearly, sometimes this will literally just take over and we shut down. We can totally shut down, I know I've felt like that before. It's just when you're under a lot of stress, it’s our stress response system.
Then there's the Cheerleader. This is your motivational system. This is where the drive takes places. It’s the reward center that releases dopamine. And you want to allow your child to have a lot of experiences that cause them to release dopamine in a healthy way. Good experiences like; winning a game, earning money, receiving recognition, feeling proud of themselves, having fun. These show a child, hey, this is what happens when you're motivated and you do the thing and there's a great reward. And then you get that release of dopamine. It helps them to keep coming back to have those experiences where they're feeling motivated again.
And then the fourth one is called the Buddha, which is the resting state. This is, y'all know the default mode network. I've talked about this before. Here it is again, the default mode network, it activates and fires up when your brain is doing nothing. You have to be awake and not doing anything. How hard is that?
In our culture today, we have our phones attached to us. We have to be listening to a podcast, be reading emails, be doing something. But the default mode network is critical. It's critical to brain health. It allows our brains to process our life, to give us time for self-reflection, to process complicated ideas, to be creative.
It stores information, it allows your brain to rejuvenate and heal. It's crucial to a child's development. And when we throw things at them to keep them entertained nonstop, and they have no downtime, no resting state of the default mode network, it's not healthy for their brain. They don't know how to process life.
So three ways to help your kids have a healthy brain:
Number one, you give them space to use their Pilot by themselves. You help them to develop their pre-formed frontal cortex, or what's it called the Pilot. Yeah, not because we're deciding everything for them, but giving them space to decide things.
Number two, make sure your child is getting enough free brain time, default mode network time, rest time, good sleep, boredom. Let their brains have time to heal.
And three, let them learn to handle their own stress.
I love how the book outlined stress. It says there's three types of stress. There's positive stress that motivates children to take risks and perform at a high level. Kind of like if you're really nervous before going to perform, and then you step out and perform and you do a good job. And then you feel so satisfied. That's like positive stress.
Then there's tolerable stress, this builds resilience. It's when kids face really tough situations, but it only lasts for a brief amount of time. And then the kid can step back and cope and recover and process. Most of the time, along with an adult and we help navigate that and that helps build resilience in our children.
And then the third kind of stress is toxic stress. This is frequent or ongoing stress. It's severe and chronic and a child doesn't have the support of an adult to process this with or any ways to recover from the stress.
So being able to identify the three types of stress and making a decision that my child's going to experience stress, but I want to be a supportive adult to help them manage their stress and help them safely recover from stressful events and regain that sense of control in their lives.
That's key to giving them that opportunity to manage stress and to build resilience and therefore gain control over their lives so that they feel like they can pick themselves up and have the drive to move forward. So those were the three ways to help your kids have a healthy brain.
But now I want to talk about my third big takeaway: Be the non anxious presence in your child's life.
Deep breath mama, because this hit me right between the eyes. I fully realize that we live in a world that's full of anxiety and it is hard to handle all the stresses of life and all the stresses of raising children and remain calm a hundred percent of the time. And I don't think that's what the authors are saying to do, because I think that's not realistic.
But what the authors are encouraging us mamas to do is to take care of ourselves, not to be perfect, but to be the non-anxious presence in your child's life. I love what they say. They say, "What you need to do as a parent is to make enjoying your kids your top parenting priority."
And can we enjoy our kids when we're stressed out? When we're anxious all the time, it's really hard. It's hard for me, too. He says, "How can you do this? How can you be this non-anxious presence?” You have to get a handle on your own anxiety. You have to get a handle on your own stress because our children are so intuitive. They pick up on it and then they catch it.
They literally can copy and catch our anxiety. The book talks about it being, I think trickle-down anxiety and we don't want that as mamas. We don't want that. I know I don't, but I also know this spoke to me so deeply because I can be an anxious presence and I don't want to, I want to be a non-anxious presence in my child's life.
They say, “Know that calm is contagious.” Being calm and confident—that is contagious to our children and by modeling that, it teaches our kids to not live an anxious life as well. Commit to your own stress management. Slow down, exercise, get enough sleep, get yourself some default mode network time where you're not looking at your phone or listening to a podcast. You put everything away. Put away social media if it's stressing you out. Power down all of these voices and get some quiet time with your thoughts. Get some sunshine, drink some more water, go see a counselor if you need to, to sort out the emotional things or the emotional baggage you're trying to work through every day.
We hear so much about self care, but I've never thought about self care and the importance of its role in parenting. And they really talk about this a lot in the book. And I really kind of loved it. It is so important for our children to have parents who are non-anxious presences in their lives. And in order to do that, we have to take care of ourselves. So making that a priority is one of the best things that you can do for your children.
And those are my three takeaways.
Number one, the key to a self-driven child is giving them as much control and autonomy in their lives as possible.
Number two, understand the way the brain works.
And number three, be the non-anxious presence in your child's life.
But there's so many, I could probably make five episodes about this book. I mean, it was so good.
A couple other things that might interest you that are also in the book: the importance of sleep, the role of technology in our kids' lives—you know, I could do a whole episode about that, I loved that one—understanding how to instill a drive for homework, a healthy view of schoolwork and college. Another episode that I might talk all about because I have a lot of thoughts on college these days.
Bottom line is, I highly recommend this book for every parent to read, it was so good. If you want to grab your own copy, head to nancyray.com/cornerstore, and it will take you directly to my Amazon affiliate store. You can see everything I've ever recommended here on the podcast or Instagram, just click on "books" and it should be right there. It's a simple way for you to help contribute to this podcast, to keep it going since it's my affiliate store I make a small commission on every purchase that you make. I'm so grateful for you. I'm always grateful to have you as a listener on this podcast, and I hope you enjoyed it.
I'm going to close with words from The Self-Driven Child:
"This summarizes these concepts perfectly. We really can't control our kids and doing so shouldn't be our goal. Our goal is to teach them to think and act independently so that they will have the judgment to succeed in school and most important in life, rather than pushing them to do things that they resist. We should seek to help them find things they love and develop their inner motivation. Our aim is to move away from a model that depends on parental pressure to one that nurtures a child's own drive. That is what we mean by the self-driven child."
Thanks for listening and I'll see you next time.
